Those who know me know I’ve long derided “anthropogenic global warming” (AGW) as a complete crock, a 21st-century fertility cult serving simultaneously as a religion substitute for those who hold traditonal religion in contempt, and as a convenient cover for the usual unholy alliance of politicians, bureaucrats and cultural thought-leaders to grab more power and control over the rest of us. And this scam is aided and abetted by scientists and certain big companies looking to ride the gravy train to wealth and/or fame.

But honestly, I never really thought about a concerted effort to scam the rest of us as such. The natural confluence of human greed and a science herd-mentality seemed sufficient to explain the rise of an idea that’s simply laughable on its face if you apply the dullest edge of Occam’s Razor to it.

But lo and behold, turns out the “science” is indeed so flimsy that a concerted effort to keep the whole house of cards intact has indeed been under way. The growing “climategate,” (or “warmergate” or “climaquiddick,” whatever) is an early holiday delight to us AGW “deniers.” The link above to Tim Blair’s wrap-up is a mere appetizer, by the way, feel free to read and further research.

Me? I’m just gonna bask in the glow of knowing that sometimes, your gut tells you what’s right and what’s pernicious nonsense, and it’s nice to have some empirical validation of that inner voice that speaks so urgently from a more primitive, but perhaps more perceptive, part of our brain.

The title of this post describes, in a nutshell, the scope of our national healthcare debate. At least, it describes the truth that YOU, the angry, pro-healthcare nationalization supporter, refuse to accept. You are not interested in the cold, hard facts in the case. “What if it happened to you!” you shriek, smugly imagining that if some horrible illness befell me or my loved ones, that I would immediately see the light. But the very worst could happen to me, and it wouldn’t change the facts, the facts that you refuse to accept. You are filled with outrage that all medical care, treatments, consultations, surgeries, pills, etc. that happen to be needed by anyone are not as widely available and cheap as ice cream. You have forgotten the long, hard slog that civilization itself suffered to get to a point where mere ice cream was cheap and abundant. And you are angered by those who point out that the ice cream isn’t free, that it never was, and never will be.

You protest: I just want the ice cream to be reasonably priced, and available to everyone. No, you don’t. You have a quarter, and that’s all you think you should pay. It doesn’t matter that the ice cream man sells it for a dollar, and that under no possible scenario could it be sold for a quarter without the ice cream man going broke. It doesn’t matter that in all likelihood, you have no true grasp of the infinite costs and complexities that go into creating and delivering a delicious ice cream cone. No, it is the ice cream man’s greed, his perfidy, the darkness in his soul that makes ice cream cost so much more than the quarter you see as fair and reasonable payment. You want the ice cream to be (mostly) free, and emotion, not rationality is the key driver of your thoughts.

So, you put your faith in the government running an ice cream truck. Of course, the government ice cream might initially be cheaper, after all, you are subsidizing it with your taxes, or your neighbors are. And the government ice cream man can make all kinds of rules the other ice cream men have to follow, and takes some of their money as well. Soon, the other ice cream men are driven out of business, having a “competitor” that makes the rules of the game, and twists them to his favor. The list of flavors begins to shrink, and the government ice cream man is deciding what you get, and how much. Nor is there any recourse, for the other ice cream men are gone, driven from the business, and you have no bargaining chip, no alternative. You get what the government ice cream man says you get, and if it’s not as much as you need, well, there is the whole neighborhood to think of, and one must consider the overall best interest of the community.

The government ice cream man keeps taking more and more of your money for “maintenance, some new freezers, etc.” The new flavors, which the old ice cream guys rolled out every couple of weeks, no longer appear. “But you promised cheaper and better ice cream,” you complain. “Why, you said you’d eliminate all the waste, how the private ice cream guys spilled a gallon of chocolate on the floor a day; you’d put an end to that. You said having all those different ice cream trucks and flavors was inefficient, and you’d fix that, and pass the savings on to us.” Hmmm. The old ice cream guys did seem to provide more stuff. It wasn’t perfect, of course, but it was far better than now — SHHH! Can that crazy talk, citizen. The government ice cream guy hears that, and maybe you don’t get any at all tomorrow.

And tomorrow’s going to be very hot, a real scorcher. Especially for you.

“There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care. These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation. Since we can’t keep track of all of them here at the White House, we’re asking for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.”

Wow, the government urging people to report you if you say things they don’t like…hmmm…that sounds vaguely familiar. Seems like I read something like that in a book once…

So here goes: the basic issues in health care are cost, quality, coverage and availability, right? Yet somehow, we’re supposed to believe the government will release the magic health care genies they have locked away in Area 51, and will actually improve all these things? Really? Putting a bunch of bureaucrat drones in nominal charge of 1/6 of our economy, whose macro decisions will all be subject to oversight from pols who swim in a sea of corrupt patronage, that’s gonna make things better? We won’t really see rationing, denial of care, wage controls driving out good talent and the death of the innovation that makes our health care industry the wonder of the world? And at a price tag of mere trillions?

Come on, people, work with me. Obama and the Dems are selling you on Free Ice Cream. Free Ice Cream is great, but most of us realized after about age 10 that it wasn’t really “free” in the broadest sense.

Anyway, that’s all, short and sweet. Now please, run and report me to the Thought Police, Syme! Ah, that’s not exactly right – fortunately, when these guys go all Big Brother, they tend to do it in true Three Stooges fashion. Clumsy and buffoonish, more cringe-inducing than terrifying. Or as Instapundit put it once, “stormtroopers in clown shoes.”

Look, libs/lefties/Dems/whatever – I hate being the guy to give you sound advice, but here we go:

You can be the most partisan, life-long member of the Democrat party, you can be the most liberal guy or gal on your block, faithfully subscribing to every left-wing cultural/social/economic belief, you can be the most hardcore believer in the notion that “man-made global warming” is catastrophic and imminent, you can have boundless faith that big government politicians and bureaucrats will always make good and wise decisions whereas markets will always tend towards the banal, foolish or evil, and yet…

AND YET….

You cannot possibly believe that this is how laws should be made and how our beloved country should be governed. You can believe all of the above, and still recoil from the insane, “ram it through without reading it” nature of these bills. You can be trembling with orgasmic glee at the prospects of dialing civilization back to the 18th century, and still be horrified that unread, 1200-page documents will become the law of the land in the blink of an eye.

Sure, be concerned that members of Congress will blindly vote for this thing without having read it. That’s bad. But as a rule, these members of Congress aren’t completely stupid. Why happily vote for a bill when they don’t know what’s in it, and haven’t had time to read or debate or consider it? Seems strange.

Ah, but you see, they don’t have to read it. Because somebody had to read, write and cobble together this monstrosity. That somebody might be a disconnected bunch, each responsible for a separate part, with little awareness of the others, but we can guess at their makeup. Rent-seekers and opportunists of all stripes, politically-favored groups, those with close connections to key lawmakers, anyone with a profit stake in a tremendous power grab by government.

Because legislation formed and passed in this way can only be exactly that: a massive power grab, with the usual corrupt giveaways to those who stand to profit off of our backs, provided that some of that profit be returned to enriching and re-electing politicians who voted for it in the first place. They don’t need to read it to know that they are voting to enrich and empower those who will keep them in power, so vote they will. And those who have read it, who actually know what is in it? They’ll gain great power and wealth, extracted from YOU in the form of taxes, regulation, your freedoms, etc.

Who gains from a massive, 1200-page piece of densely worded new law? Not you. Some lawyers do, because somebody has to explain all this to bewildered business owners and reassure them they’re not breaking the law. Bureaucrats do – now even more personal and economic freedom is under the thumb of mid-level government flunkies, with the power to shut you down and wreck your livelihood. Unless you’re paying off the right people or connected to the right politicians, of course. As always, the large and powerful (hello? GE?), will benefit over the small “mom-n-pop” outfit, regardless of industry, wherever this bill touches. And it touches everything.

And who loses? You. More freedom and more of your possessions, money etc., siphoned off by bland, smooth-faced politicians and their opportunistic enablers.

Notice I haven’t really touched on the particulars. Because it DOESN”T MATTER. This could be a bill ostensibly about almost anything – cap-n-trade, gov’t health care, “stimulus” spending, etc. Any bill, with over a thousand pages, rushed through before anyone voting on its passage could plausibly claim to have read it, is, pure-and-simple, another power grab and wealth-extraction vehicle, taking freedom and wealth from We The People, and transferring it to politicians, favored constituents and well-connected rent-seekers. It can be nothing else. Which is why those Congressfolks who vote YEA do so with little qualms. They haven’t read it. But they absolutely know what’s in it, that being an early, and non-voluntary Christmas present to them and theirs from me and you.

My favorite quote? “You created a situation where you cannot be wrong. If the economy loses 2 million jobs over the next few years, you can say yes, but it would’ve lost 5.5 million jobs. If we create a million jobs, you can say, well, it would have lost 2.5 million jobs. You’ve given yourself complete leverage where you cannot be wrong, because you can take any scenario and make yourself look correct.”

Bear in mind, this is a Democrat senator grilling a Democrat treasury secretary in a Democrat administration. Even among his allies, the President knows his phoney-baloney numbers are generating mostly eye-rolls.

If you don’t already, you must watch Fox whenever Krauthammer is on, because he cuts through the BS like a knife through warm butter. “Pure fantasy” he calls these numbers, and he’s exactly right. It’s gibberish, it’s nonsense on stilts, and thinking adults (heck, thinking junior high kids) should be embarrased when our supposedly “best & brightest” start using numbers pulled from the output end of their alimentary canal, that no only have no connection to reality, but that are completely fake, made-up and silly. There’s no way to measure a “saved” job, and as noted at the link, the “created” goal keeps moving with economic bad news.

The simple truth is that the economy will recover like it always has, and not only will it do so without any help from Washington, it will do so in spite of Washington.

Others have covered this far better, here, here and here, so I’ll be brief:

What the $#@! is a US President doing involved with the bankruptcy proceedings of a car company, in any way, in any manner, for any reason? Further, he gets to rearrange the terms and conditions to benefit unions who helped him get elected, and forces various banking and investment entities bend over or else suffer the combination of government force, obedient media attack dogs and TARP extortion to make their lives hell? Existing bankruptcy law, hell, the rule of law in general – no longer important or worth paying attention to?

I’ll avoide the obvious “what if Bush did this…” I’ll avoid a call to arms to fellow conservatives/libertarians. This is for liberals and democrats:

Wake up, you useless pack of bleating sheeple, and do it fast. Trust me, no sane human being wants the government wielding this much power and influence, no matter what party, what person, what issue. You won’t be in power forever, and you – and all of us – will rue your timid acquiescence in the face of the most blatant power grab in American history. No matter what your political and cultural leanings, even the farthest left of you cannot think unchecked government power a good thing. It will be in a thousand countless acts like this, almost under the radar of many fellow citizens, that freedom is truly lost.

Yes, today you think a “greedy executive” or “wall street fatcat” is getting the shaft. Tomorrow, you’ll find that you are merely a subservient drone, awaiting a contempt-filled bureaucrat’s permission on things affecting your life and happiness, as government burrows into every facet of our lives. Just wait until they totally control health care, energy and education. And you know what? Somehow, the “greedy execs and wall street fat cats” will somehow have all kinds of wealth and influence and power, and will use it to pay off mealy-mouthed politicians who claim to be fighting for you, while making you poorer and less free.